"And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up their sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

Great news! The war is over! Now what do we do with all these weapons we built for the war? Turn them into things civilians can use! All that scrap steel can make some heavy machinery or be used in construction. Those nuclear weapons? Fuel rods. TNT? Use it for earth-moving. Those factories that built bombers and warships? Use them to build cars. Imagine all the possibilities.

A variation of this is that when a simple tool in the current time is revealed to be a weapon in the past. Perhaps it's due to the current people finding a Lost Technology or alien tech without knowing its real purpose, only figuring out that it's an useful tool in some way.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, some Tachikoma are repurposed into civilian roles after Section 9 is "disbanded". One works in a care home, and another is used in high altitude construction sites, etc. The one in the care home is "gifted" an explosive shell from a Shell-Shocked Veteran and sets of to rescue Bateau in the finale.

Japanese school uniforms were inspired by 19th military uniforms with sailor suits as the basis for girls uniforms and Prussian cadet uniforms as the basis for boys.

Trenchcoats, for it's namesake, were originally worn by officers and soldiers in the trenches during World War One to protect them from rain and cold. Today, it's been adopted by civilians, private detectives, and the occasional exhibitionists.

Although neckties have always been a civilian article for centuries, it's ancestor, the cravat, were worn by Croatian mercenaries fighting for France during the Thirty Years' War. France, being France, adopted the styles, and the rest is history.

Film

Arms Dealer Yuri Orlov claims this is happening in one scene of Lord of War, when Agent Valentine catches him shipping a helicopter gunship to the African nation of Burkina Faso. Yuri claims that with all the excess hardware after the recent fall of the Soviet Union, all they can do with it all is repurpose it for civilian use. Valentine isn't fooled, especially since the missiles and bullets for the helicopter are also going to Burkina Faso, albeit to a client at a different address. Unfortunately, this was apparently a real life legal loophole at the time, and Valentine is forced to let Yuri go.

At the start of Small Soldiers, the GloboTech Industries has basically resolved to do this by buying up companies in other industries, then using its state-of-the-art military technology to make superior products. This is how A.I. Is a Crapshoot computer chips end up in the Commando Elite and Gorgonite action figures. Inverted at the end when the CEO decides to sell the toys as weapons after all.

Literature

From The Bible: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and study war no more."- Isaiah 2:4

In A Darkling Plain, Tom notes that the medical technology which diagnosed his weak heart was made from repurposed Stalker technology, which is typically used to turn corpses into military cyborgs.

Discussed in The Heroes of Olympus novel "The House of Hades", where Frank threatens that unless Triptolemus frees his friends, he will beat his sword into Triptolemus' head instead of beating it into a plowshare.

Known Space: On the backstory of the Man-Kzin Wars saga, humanity had decided to become peaceful and gotten rid of all of its weapons, meaning that during the first encounters with the Kzin, the Earthlings had only unarmed vehicles and other civilian equipment... unfortunately for the Kzin, the fact that Humans Are Warriors means that they are also murderously adaptive, and Improvised Weaponry that was the result of on-the-spot MacGyvering was what killed those early Kzin war parties (one of the most famous instances being using a ship's fusion torch engine and the energy beam it fired off for propulsion to cut a Kzin ship in half).

This trope is mentioned in George R.R. Martin's "And Seven Times Never Kill Man", in the story describing the creation of the militant cult of the Children of Bakkalon, and it's portrayed as being a stupid idea and displeasing to their god, Bakkalon the Pale Child, who thinks Humans Are Warriors should be the norm and all other species should be under their heel:

"And the pale child came and stood before them, with His great sword in His hand, and in a voice like thunder He rebuked them. 'You have been weak children,' He told them, 'for you have disobeyed. Where are your swords? Did I not set swords in your hands?'

"And the children cried out, 'We have beaten them into plowshares, oh Bakkalon!'

"And He was sore angry. 'With plowshares, then, shall you face the Sons of Hranga! With plowshares shall you slay the Horde of Fyndii!' And He left them, and heard no more their weeping, for the Heart of Bakkalon is a Heart of Fire."

Terran Trade Authority series by Stewart Cowley. After the Proxima War, many of the military spacecraft used in the war are converted for civilian use, e.g. by removing their weapons.

Live Action TV

This is the premise of the short-lived History Channel show "Tactical to Practical", where Survivor: Marquesas alumnus and ex-naval aviator Hunter Ellis showcases each technology that was used for military purposes that were converted to civilian usage.

Music

In the climax of the music video for Dire Straits' "Brothers In Arms", Mark Knopfler is shown holding an assault rifle in hands which then switches into a guitar for the final solo.

Video Games

Halo 3: ODST: The M313 "Elephant", a military vehicle designed for mass troop deployment, is seen in the city of New Mombasa as the "Oliphant", repurposed into a garbage truck. Though smaller now and lacking weapons, the Oliphant is still durable enough to plow through cars and serve as a minor tank.

Star Wars Battlefront II (2017): Inferno Squad utilizes the Imperial Raider-Class Corvette Corvus - designed to engage both starfighters and larger ships - for their operations during the Galactic Civil War. During the final mission, which takes place a few decades after the war ends, it is revealed that the crew has since converted it to a commercial freight hauler.

The space-habitat of Credomar. A journalist even mentions that it was created by the 'Swords to Plowshears' project. Essentially, it's a Hyperspace Death Ray with enormous stategic value, which has been repurposed as a deep-space habitat. An Arc centers around the king of Credomar evacuating the entire population to a habitable moon somewhere in order to reactivate the weapon - not because he's looking to pick a fight with anyone, but because he's worried that The Federation - who BUILT the damn thing in the first place - may at some point declare a 'state of emergency' and fire the weapon without evacuating the population first...

At one point Kevyn converts their terapedo supply into a Very Large Array, placing them around a solar system and using their targeting sensors to survey it without giving out radar signals. Of course, they're still fully functional teleporting missiles, which is why he calls it a Very Dangerous Array.

Referenced by Petey when he sends the Tohdfraug invasion fleet to Andromeda to fight the Paanuri with no supply line and compares them to swords.

Tohdfraug Admiral: "But if you break a sword through abuse or neglect, it's useless."

Petey: "As a sword, yes. Eventually I'll be needing plowshares."

Western Animation

One early Mighty Mouse cartoon shows a cheese factory making Swiss cheese by rolling wheels of regular cheese in front of a World War I Vickers machine gun, which shoots the distinctive holes in the cheese, making it Swiss.

In the 1939 animated short Peace on Earth, the debris of a terrible war that killed off the human species is converted into little houses made of soldier helmets and street posts made from bayonets by Woodland Creatures.

Downplayed example from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The show has instances were weapons such as catapults, cannons, and even tanks are being used for games (like chucking pumpkins) or celebrating parties.

Real Life

The Philippine "jeepney", specifically the "Sarao" style, originated from Willys MB jeeps used during World War II, and the structure was converted as public utility vehicles that ultimately became an icon of the country.

As gunpowder and cannons rendered medieval castles obsolete, some castles that weren't abandoned or in ruins were converted into more habitable places, and over the centuries, especially with the Medieval revival in the 19th century, the original function of castles has been abandoned and the modern concept of the castle has been imagined as a fortified palace, both include stained glass windows found in cathedrals. This video explains more about the modern/fantasy concept of castles.

The Megatons to Megawatts program converts nuclear weapons into fuel rods that produce 10% of the US electricity supply.

Nuclear power itself is an example, because for over a decade the only use of nuclear power was to build bombs, and then later to power submarines.

The Internet. Invented for military and scientific uses when it was called ARPANET, it is now used for information, communication, business, and research, if not used forotherthings.

Drones such as for attack and/or for surveillance are now being used by civilians for fun and to see the sights in a bird's eye view perspective.

The escopattera (A portmanteau of the Spanish words escopeta and guitarra, meaning "shotgun" and "guitar" respectively) is a type of guitar made from a modified gun, first invented by Colombian peace activist Cesar Lopez after seeing a soldier holding his gun like a guitar following the 2003 El Nogal Club bombing in Bogota.

During The Napoleonic Wars, the French government offered a reward to whoever would find a solution to help preserve food for marching soldiers. Thus canned goods were invented by Nicolas Appert. Nowadays, and through the help of soldiers during World War II, though some people may not know the inventor, canned goods are now everywhere for everyday consumption.

Inversions (Plowshares to Swords):

Music

Inverted on the national anthem of Costa Rica, which says that, should the nation be under threat, the nation's citizens will turn their ploughshares into swords.

Inverted by "Ashes In Your Mouth" by Megadeth, which references the biblical line.

Melting down all metals, turning plows and shears to swords

Shun words of the Bible, we need implements of war

Video Games

Invoked and inverted in Empire Earth 2 with the "Plows to Spears" infantry upgrade, although it doesn't affect to your farming speed.

Inverted in Starcraft II: Most of the new Protoss weapons are old work vehicles that have been repurposed.

In the case you wonder it is also the name of a Magic the Gathering card: [1]◊

A LOT of Military Technology is sent towards the civilian side... also known as the plowshare of your trope. Cellphones where initially quick Intel tools for communicating important information and or saying where to drop the artillery strike.

Also if I don't recall wrong:

In the Italian written series of "Don Camilo" by Giovanni Guareschi there is a story about some family that tries to re-purpose a tank into a field tractor but given the lack of knowledge they have one hell of a time then forget it and then ask the local priest and then the priest involves the towns mechanic which is also the major... hilarityensues

I'm pretty sure that in The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror II, when Lisa wishes for world peace, there are a couple of sight gags of the Pentagon being turned into a playground and weapons being melted down to make something else, but I can't remember what it is.

^In a different Treehouse Of Horror episode (XIII) all the guns in Springfield are melted down into playground equipment, but they still look like guns and apparently still have the bullets in them, since they go off as kids slide down the slide.

In the 1939 animated short Peace On Earth, the debris of a terrible war that killed off the human species is converted into little houses made of soldier helmets and street posts made from bayonets by Woodland Creatures.

The space-habitat of Credomar from Schlock Mercenary. A journalist even mentions that it was created by the 'Swords to Plowshears' project. Essentially, it's a Hyperspace Death Ray with enormous stategic value, which has been repurposed as a deep-space habitat. An Arc centers around the king of Credomar evacuating the entire population to a habitable moon somewhere in order to reactivate the weapon - not because he's looking to pick a fight with anyone, but because he's worried that The Federation - who BUILT the damn thing in the first place - may at some point declare a 'state of emergency' and fire the weapon without evacuating the population first...

This trope is mentioned in George RR Martin's "And Seven Times Never Kill Man", in the story describing the creation of the militant cult of the Children of Bakkalon, and it's portrayed as being a stupid idea and displeasing to their god, Bakkalon the Pale Child, who thinks Humans Are Warriors should be the norm and all other species should be under their heel:

"And the pale child came and stood before them, with His great sword in His hand, and in a voice like thunder He rebuked them. 'You have been weak children,' He told them, 'for you have disobeyed. Where are your swords? Did I not set swords in your hands?'

"And the children cried out, 'We have beaten them into plowshares, oh Bakkalon!'

"And He was sore angry. 'With plowshares, then, shall you face the Sons of Hranga! With plowshares shall you slay the Horde of Fyndii!' And He left them, and heard no more their weeping, for the Heart of Bakkalon is a Heart of Fire."

Unfortunately, this phrase is a little too well known and widely dispersed and this trope is just going to end up a dumping ground of every time anyone references the parable. It's already starting to show in the examples you're attracting.

Referenced in Night Watch, where Vimes sees the stuff the government ban on weapons has missed, like an old haldberd used to hold up a clothesline, a sword used to poke a fire... which is by far outstripped by the perfectly legal tools (billhooks, cleavers...) that are being repurposed into very efficient weapons.

^ Decent as a working title, but I'd prefer something less clunky. Weapons To Tools maybe? It keeps the same juxtaposition and the parable but won't get the stock phrase misuse. That said, the inverse trope Tools To Weapons would probably be good to develop in conjunction with this one.

^ Not quite. Improvised Weapon is just picking the tool and using it as a weapon. This is actually doing work and transforming those old tools into weapons.

When you hit someone with a wrench, you're using an Improvised Weapon. When you rework the wrench in a forge into a spiked mace, you're changing Tools To Weapons. The difference is do you just grab it? Or do you turn it into something else.

In The Grace Of Kings, one of these was planned by the Visionary Villain Emperor Mapidere but never came to fruition. After conquering a continent and subduing warring states, he wanted to confiscate all swords in the realm and then melt them down to make statutes of all of the deities in the pantheon as a monument to peace.

The Infocom text adventure game Nord And Bert Couldn't Make Head Or Tail Of It had a section called "Buying the Farm" where you had to perform certain metaphorical actions literally, one of which was to HAMMER SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES.

One early Mighty Mouse cartoon shows a cheese factory making Swiss cheese by rolling wheels of regular cheese in front of a World War I Vickers machine gun, which shoots the distinctive holes in the cheese, making it Swiss.

"Nuclear power itself is an example, because for over a decade the only use of nuclear power was to build bombs, and then later to power submarines."

This reads at first like you're saying the "plowshare" is the submarines (which are military submarines and therefore still swords) - but I guess you mean the plowshare is nuclear plants for the civilian electricity supply? You should probably make that explicit.

This is a running theme in Russian Humour. The jokes are based either on how repurposed military hardware is ineffective and unergonomic, or how it is repurposed into the most improbable things (e.g. perambulators from machine gun parts, a worker steals the parts and can't get how to assemble something other than a machine gun from them), or how the repurposed hardware is still perfectly fit for military use (e.g. the "peaceful Soviet tractor" that can release a Macross Missile Massacre).

If I could broaden this regarding military clothing turned into everyday apparel, do trenchcoats count?
Trenchcoats, for it's namesake, were originally worn by officers and soldiers in the trenches during World War One to protect them from rain and cold. Today, it's been adopted by civilians, and private detectives.

In in one Retief story, the CDT have re-purposed Bolo tanks (AI supertanks with megaton firepower) for farming and mining by attaching bulldozing blades. Subverted in that the Bolos are still more than capable of being used for weapons of war.

Neckties: although it has always been a civilian article for centuries, it's ancestor, the cravat, were worn by Croatian mercenaries fighting for France during the Thirty Years War. France, being France, adopted the styles, and the rest is history;

Ray-Ban aviator glasses;

Cardigans and Bomber jackets;

Pants like khakis and cargo pants;

Footwear like Doc Martens and Wellington boots. And the aptly named combat boots;

At the start of Small Soldiers, the GloboTech Industries has basically resolved to do this by buying up companies in other industries, then using its state-of-the-art military technology to make superior products. This is how AI Is A Crapshoot computer chips end up in the Commando Elite and Gorgonite action figures. Inverted at the end when the CEO decides to sell the toys as weapons after all.

Ok, if we're not going to name it with a stock phrase, how about broadening the trope a little bit? After the war, you're going to do more than turn your missiles into planter-boxes. You're probably also going to stop building new ones! And turn your tank factory into an automobile factory. It's basically the Switch To A Peacetime Economy.

Arms Dealer Yuri Orlov claims this is happening in one scene of Lord Of War, when Agent Valentine catches him shipping a helicopter gunship to the African nation of Burkina Faso. Yuri claims that with all the excess hardware after the recent fall of the Soviet Union, all they can do with it all is repurpose it for civilian use. Valentine isn't fooled, especially since the missiles and bullets for the helicopter are also going to Burkina Faso, albeit to a client at a different address. Unfortunately, this was apparently a real life legal loophole at the time, and Valentine is forced to let Yuri go.

In Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex, some Tachikoma are repurposed into civilian roles after Section 9 is "disbanded". One works in a care home, and another is used in high altitude construction sites, etc. The one in the care home is "gifted" an explosive shell from a Shell Shocked Veteran and sets of to rescue Bateau in the finale.

The escopattera (A portmanteau of the Spanish words escopeta and guitarra, meaning "shotgun" and "guitar" respectively) is a type of guitar made from a modified gun, first invented by Colombian peace activist Cesar Lopez after seeing a soldier holding his gun like a guitar following the 2003 El Nogal Club bombing in Bogota.

At one point Kevyn converts their terapedo supply into a Very Large Array, placing them around a solar system and using their targeting sensors to survey it without giving out radar signals. Of course, they're still fully functional teleporting missiles, which is why he calls it a Very Dangerous Array.

Referenced by Petey when he sends the Tohdfraug invasion fleet to Andromeda to fight the Paanuri with no supply line and compares them to swords.

Tohdfraug Admiral: "But if you break a sword through abuse or neglect, it's useless."

Family Guy: Inverted in the Y2K-themed episode Da Boom, where Peter had all the post-apocalyptic town's irrigation pipes converted into guns. Ironically, the town was overrun as the guns were being melted down — presumably to be returned to tools.

Downplayed example from My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. The show has instances were weapons such as catapults, cannons, and even tanks are being used for games (like chucking pumpkins) or celebrating parties.

[1] How about Tactical To Practical? The show is obscure, but the phrase is catchy, describes what this trope is, and is... well... Practical.

I'm not certain about Nuclear Power... I think it actually came first (or developed side by side with the Manhattan project). Reactors did need to work in order to prove concept and produce weapons grade plutonium and uranium. The first Reactor (Chicago Pile-1) came online in 1942. The first Atomic Bomb (Trinity) was detonated in 1945. Early atomic scientists concieved of both the Energy and Weapons aspect of the results of nuclear physics as far back as 1938, when fission was first proven to exist.

Also, under Yanks With Tanks, there's a list of modern tech that got it's start with military funding.

The true reason for the Space Race was so that Russian and United States could more openly test (and flaunt) their missal systems. The Saturn V rocket was the first rocket built exclusively for NASA purposes... this came almost a decade after shooting stuff into orbit. Some critics even find that specific treaties banning the weaponization of space have chilled the development of space flight and exploration, as they offer little in the way of research funding from militaries.

Halo 3 ODST: The M313 "Elephant", a military vehicle designed for mass troop deployment, is seen in the city of New Mombasa as the "Oliphant", repurposed into a garbage truck. Though smaller now and lacking weapons, the Oliphant is still durable enough to plow through cars and serve as a minor tank.

Discussed in The Heroes Of Olympus novel "The House of Hades", where Frank threatens that unless Triptolemus frees his friends, he will beat his sword into Triptolemus' head instead of beating it into a plowshare.

Known Space: On the backstory of the Man-Kzin Wars saga, humanity had decided to become peaceful and gotten rid of all of its weapons, meaning that during the first encounters with the Kzin, the Earthlings had only unarmed vehicles and other civilian equipment... unfortunately for the Kzin, the fact that Humans Are Warriors means that they are also murderously adaptive, and Improvised Weaponry that was the result of on-the-spot Mac Gyvering was what killed those early Kzin war parties (one of the most famous instances being using a ship's fusion torch engine and the energy beam it fired off for propulsion to cut a Kzin ship in half).

A variation of this is that when a simple tool in the current time is revealed to be a weapon in the past. Perhaps it's due to the current people finding a Lost Technology or alien tech without knowing its real purpose, only figuring out that it's an useful tool in some way.

I have an example but I'm not sure if it counts. In the short story The Gun Without a Bang by Robert Sheckley, the protagonist is on maintenance job on some backwoods communications equipment on an alien planet, and for his protection he's armed with a prototype disintegration gun. The protagonist's ship gets destroyed in a battle with some wild dog-like aliens, and he's forced to survive in the wild for weeks or months. His prototype gun works, but it doesn't serve as a very good deterrent against the dog creatures (since it doesn't make a bang to scare them off). When the protagonist is finally found, his rescuers ask how the gun worked. He says he couldn't have survived without it, revealing that he had been using it as a hammer to drive sharp stakes into the ground to keep the dogs out.

So this isn't so much a military technology being re-purposed for civilian use as a self defense weapon being used as a mundane tool in extenuating circumstances. Does that fit the essence of this trope, or no?

Added a quick example to the videogames section from the new star wars game. It's a minor spoiler own it's own, but the more you think about it the spoilerier it gets, so... reader discretion advised, I guess.

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